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J. Atsu Amegashie discusses a contest between scholars on the basis of three popular indices of citation.

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This video video explains the concept of citations, which refer to the references made to published works. Citations are essential for assessing the significance of a scholar's work, often influencing promotions, salaries, and university rankings. The importance of a citation is likened to the popularity of a piece of music being downloaded.

The discussion includes various methods for measuring citations, notably the H-index and I10-index, both of which aim to evaluate the impact or quality of a scholar's work. The H-index reflects the number of papers by a scholar that have received at least a certain number of citations, while the I10-index counts the number of articles with at least 10 citations.

This video video critiques the H-index for potentially underrepresenting scholars whose work may be highly cited but has fewer papers. It notes the significance of the quality of journals where papers are published, exemplified by the impact factor, which influences citation rates.

Furthermore, the text addresses unethical practices such as citation cartels, where scholars fraudulently inflate citation counts by citing each other. The overall assertion is that while the total citation count may focus on breadth, when combined with journal quality, it provides a more balanced assessment of scholarly impact, equally considering depth.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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A citation is a reference to a published

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work or published work.

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So if somebody cites your work,

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then, then that is a citation.

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So if I write a, an article

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and if somebody cites it, that's one citation.

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Now they are used to determine the importance

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of a person's work, because if you do work

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and people are citing you, then it shows

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how important the work is.

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It's just like music.

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If you have a piece of music and people are downloading it

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and playing it, it is, shows how important

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the piece of work is.

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So citations are used for promotions,

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for salaries, for getting prices.

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Like the Nobel Prize, they're used for ranking universities.

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So it's if Harvard or Oxford,

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or maybe Hebrew University or university in South America

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or somewhere else, if the arts professors

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or lecturers are being cited, often

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that raises the prestige of university.

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Even in law, even in law justices,

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there is a famous British judge called Lord Denny,

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and his legal opinions are highly cited,

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and that made, that made him popular as a scholar.

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People cite the, if the lawyers talk, they cite Lord,

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Lord Denning, especially in the, in the, in, in the British

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Australian Commonwealth system.

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They cite him a lot. Um,

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there are justice in the US like Justice,

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the Legisl Anon Scalia, who was the Supreme Court,

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his legal opinions were cited,

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and that made him popular.

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You know, somebody writes,

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let's say 10 papers and paper.

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One is cited seven times paper,

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two cited eight times paper three is cited

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a thousand times and so forth.

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So what a citation index does is how do I aggregate,

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how do I summarize the citations of all these 10 papers?

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And so people have developed, different techniques.

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Uh, so one thing that people worry about is they look at

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breadth of a, of a scholar and the depth of a, of a scholar.

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So the breadth of a scholar's breadth is the number

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of papers that he writes, or he or she writes.

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And the depth is how the quality of each paper

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that the person's writes.

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So, so there's so, so somebody may write lots of papers.

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So they have breadth, but the papers are not really cited.

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So they don't have depth. Somebody may write few papers,

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so they don't have a lot, a whole range,

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but each paper is cited a lot.

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So now how do you measure these things?

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If I have, if I have two

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Scholars, one has only one paper

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that is cited a thousand times.

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So that's a high quality word. It has, it has a huge impact.

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And then the other has 10 papers.

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Each is cited a hundred times.

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So both of them have a, have 2000 citations of thousand,

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but one is spread over 10 papers.

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And for that scholar, it's, it's, it's only for,

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one paper sometimes.

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So, so, so here we're measuring breadth

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by the number of papers you write.

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There's people who also measure breadth

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by the different topics you write.

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So somebody can write 10 papers,

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but they're on the same topic.

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Somebody will say, that person doesn't have breath.

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But I don't consider that actually.

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So one citation index is the total citation count.

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That one only counts the total number of citations

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to all the papers that the, the scholar has written.

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So it just, it doesn't look at, debt.

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It just looks at breadth.

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You've written, you've written, you've written 10

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papers in total.

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They have thousand citations.

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And so your citations count is a thousand.

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The each index that is, that was involved

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by a physicist tries to track a balance between depth

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and, depth, depth and,

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and, and, and breadth.

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So the H index is the nu is the number of papers each

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of a scholar that each have

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at least h citations.

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So if a, if a scholar has a citation of 10,

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it means that a scholar has written 10 papers

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and each of them have 10, at least 10 citations.

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So if a scholar, like the example I gave,

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if a scholar has 10 papers

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and each of them has hundred citations, that's eight.

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Index it 10.

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So I, so I discussed the, the disadvantage of the,

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of the H index later,

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and there is now an index called the I 10 index,

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which was developed by Google.

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The I 10 index is the number of articles by

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scholar that have received at least 10 citations.

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So when you have, when you have, 25,

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when you have 50 papers

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and 25 of them have at least 10 citations, the I 10 index

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will be 25.

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You have one paper that has a thousand citations,

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and they don't have any other people.

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The h the H index will penalize you your

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citation index H index is one.

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Okay? And so it doesn't,

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so h the H index will waste citations.

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Like I just Googled. There's an economist

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that MIT put semi glue. He

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Has total citations of more of two 31,000,

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but his H index is only 68.

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So the will waste his, his citation.

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So let, lemme give, go back to that example what I said.

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If you have 10, papers, each

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with a thousand citations, your H index is 10.

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So the excess, all those thousand citations, don't, don't,

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don't, don't, don't, don't matter.

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Okay? So the H index, waste citations.

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So the h this shortcut of the H index

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will not be a problem if you're in a field.

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People have found out, if you're in a field like,

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physics where people write a lot of papers,

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but also have the papers are highly cited,

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or you are in a field like mathematics

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where people don't write a lot of papers and,

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and papers are not cited too much.

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That is if you're in a field where the number of papers

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and the number of citations move together.

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If, if they're, if they're correlated positively,

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then the H index may not be a handicap.

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But in, I feel like economics where people don't write a lot

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of papers, but they write highly cited papers,

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then the H index becomes a problem.

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So, what, what,

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so the other citation index

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that I've discussed is the total citation index.

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That one takes your total number of citations,

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doesn't look at the number of papers you've written,

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it just says these are your total number of, of citations

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for all the papers you've written.

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So people say that that has

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a disadvantage because doesn't look at depth,

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it doesn't look at the number of times each paper is cited.

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It just looks at all the citations for the, for the papers.

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But like I discussed in that, in, in, in my paper,

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in reality, that's what what scholars do.

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We look at, we look at the total citations,

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but we also look at the quality

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of journals in which the citations appear.

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So when you combine the quality of the journal

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and the total citation index,

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it's gonna dominate the H index

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because the H index has this undesirable property

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where the number of papers you write is a cap

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on the, on, on, on your number of citations.

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So the h the, because the, the, the, the H index it with

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citations, you can, you can get

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so many citations, but it don't count.

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So look at the number of papers you are writing are not,

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are not keeping up with the, which you are being cited.

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So overall, if you compare, if you take, if you combine

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the total citation index

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and the quality of journals, which is

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what we actually do in in academia,

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we just don't look at your number of citations.

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We also look at the quality of journals in which those

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citations appear, or the,

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or the quality of journals in which we've published.

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Then the total citations count will dominate the H index.

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The quality of journals is usually measured by

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what is called the impact factor.

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And the impact factor is the average number of citations

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to papers published in

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that journal over a certain period of time.

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Okay? And what has been found is that even journals with

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Im high empath factors are dominated by only a few papers.

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So there are papers

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that appear in high empath factor journals

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that don't get cited.

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Somebody did some work some years ago

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and found that the median paper in the AM

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American Economy Review, which is one

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of the top journal top five journals in economics, has

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zero citation, don't get cited.

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So this is a case where the prestige

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of the journal is driven by only

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very few highly cited papers

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or various heterogeneity in the number of papers

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that get ci, but still is a question of averages.

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On average, if you publish in a journal

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with a high impact factor, you are likely

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to be cited more than if you publish in a journal

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with a low impact factor.

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This is because journals with high EM impact factor factors

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or journals with high empath factors are

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high quality journals.

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So the referee process is more rigorous,

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they are more demanding.

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So the papers they end up publishing are high,

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tend to be high quality papers.

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So again, I'm talking in terms of averages.

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That's not, it doesn't mean that every paper that apply

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that appears in a high impact factor journal is a high

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quality paper or article.

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But in on average, the, the papers

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that appear in those journals are, are good.

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And in most disciplines, like in physics, economics,

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mathematics and all that, we agree on

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what the top journals are like in mathematics.

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The s of mathematics is considered

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to be a very good journal in economics.

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We have five top journals that are,

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that we agree are very good journals.

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So, so the quality of, so the quality of the journals,

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ma matter a lot.

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So I, somebody sent me an article

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yesterday and there's now something called

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what their friend was citation cartels.

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So these are people who fraudulently cite each other.

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So the, the, the, the article was about somebody

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who had done a study where they saw that there's,

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there are some universities in China

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and Saudi Arabia that all of a sudden in mathematics,

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their scholars are getting cited a lot.

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And it's because they form what are called citation cartels,

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where they publish in low quality

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journals and cite each other.

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They cite their colleagues to, to, to,

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to artificially inflict the, the citations. There's

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Something also called, citation pad,

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where you send an article to a journal

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and the reviewers insist

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that you have to cite certain papers.

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They put pressure into c certain papers,

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and those papers tend to be their own papers.

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So like, like you expect in anything that is competitive,

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people try to cheat and all and, and all that.

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Yeah. But the quality of the journal matters a lot.

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And, and we kind of agree on what, in most fields,

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we agree on what the good journals are.

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The field in which we use the index matters.

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So again, if you are in a field where,

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the, for example, if there are field where the number

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of papers and the number of citations are correlated,

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so in a field where people write a lot of papers

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and the papers tend to be cited, so they are correlated,

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or in a field where people don't write many papers like

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mathematics, and the papers are not cited that much here.

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The, the, the, the, the number of citations,

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the number of papers go together.

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If in that field kind of field, then maybe, then,

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then the H index will not be, will will, the shortcomings

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of the H index will not be too apparent.

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The, the H index may do a good job,

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but if in a field where the correlation between the number

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of papers you write and, and citations is weak, right?

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So that you end up in a, in a field

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where people don't write a lot of papers,

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but the papers are highly cited,

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then the H index will not be a good, index.

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But in general, no matter what, which field you are in,

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if you combine the total citation count with a quality

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of journals, that strikes a good balance between depth

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and breadth of work.

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And so in general, I would say that, the, the,

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the main message is

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that the total citations count gets a bad rap

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for not being a good in depth,

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because it doesn't, it's focused on breadth but not depth.

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But the reality is that is scholars,

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we just don't look at the total citations.

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We combine it with the College of journals that

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a scholar publishes a

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and if you combine those two, then it's okay.

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It's, it, it, it, it'll good, it'll give good incentives to

14:13.825 --> 14:14.785
to, to, to scholars.

The Importance and Measurement of Citations

00:00:00 - A citation is a reference to a published work or published work. So if somebody cites your work, then, then that is a citation. So if I write a, an article and if somebody cites it, that's one citation. Now they are used to determine the importance of a person's work, because if you do work and people are citing you, then it shows how important the work is. It's just like music.
00:00:36 - and playing it, it is, shows how important the piece of work is. So citations are used for promotions, for salaries, for getting prices. Like the Nobel Prize, they're used for ranking universities. So it's if Harvard or Oxford, or maybe Hebrew University or university in South America or somewhere else, if the arts professors
00:01:07 - that raises the prestige of university. Even in law, even in law justices, there is a famous British judge called Lord Denny, and his legal opinions are highly cited, and that made, that made him popular as a scholar. People cite the, if the lawyers talk, they cite Lord, Lord Denning, especially in the, in the, in, in the British Australian Commonwealth system. They cite him a lot.
00:01:39 - the Legisl Anon Scalia, who was the Supreme Court, his legal opinions were cited, and that made him popular. You know, somebody writes, let's say 10 papers and paper. One is cited seven times paper, two cited eight times paper three is cited a thousand times and so forth. So what a citation index does is how do I aggregate,
00:02:13 - And so people have developed, different techniques. so one thing that people worry about is they look at breadth of a, of a scholar and the depth of a, of a scholar. So the breadth of a scholar's breadth is the number of papers that he writes, or he or she writes. And the depth is how the quality of each paper that the person's writes.
00:02:41 - So they have breadth, but the papers are not really cited. So they don't have depth. Somebody may write few papers, so they don't have a lot, a whole range, but each paper is cited a lot. So now how do you measure these things? If I have, if I have two Scholars, one has only one paper that is cited a thousand times. So that's a high quality word. It has, it has a huge impact.

Measuring Scholarly Impact: Depth vs. Breadth

00:03:11 - Each is cited a hundred times. So both of them have a, have 2000 citations of thousand, but one is spread over 10 papers. And for that scholar, it's, it's, it's only for, one paper sometimes. So, so, so here we're measuring breadth by the number of papers you write. There's people who also measure breadth by the different topics you write.
00:03:40 - but they're on the same topic. Somebody will say, that person doesn't have breath. But I don't consider that actually. So one citation index is the total citation count. That one only counts the total number of citations to all the papers that the, the scholar has written. So it just, it doesn't look at, debt. It just looks at breadth. You've written, you've written, you've written 10 papers in total. They have thousand citations.
00:04:14 - The each index that is, that was involved by a physicist tries to track a balance between depth and, depth, depth and, and, and, and breadth. So the H index is the nu is the number of papers each of a scholar that each have at least h citations. So if a, if a scholar has a citation of 10,
00:04:45 - and each of them have 10, at least 10 citations. So if a scholar, like the example I gave, if a scholar has 10 papers and each of them has hundred citations, that's eight. Index it 10. So I, so I discussed the, the disadvantage of the, of the H index later, and there is now an index called the I 10 index, which was developed by Google.
00:05:18 - scholar that have received at least 10 citations. So when you have, when you have, 25, when you have 50 papers and 25 of them have at least 10 citations, the I 10 index will be 25. You have one paper that has a thousand citations, and they don't have any other people. The h the H index will penalize you your
00:05:48 - Okay? And so it doesn't, so h the H index will waste citations. Like I just Googled. There's an economist that MIT put semi glue. He Has total citations of more of two 31,000, but his H index is only 68. So the will waste his, his citation. So let, lemme give, go back to that example what I said. If you have 10, papers, each

Evaluating Citation Metrics in Academic Publishing

00:06:23 - So the excess, all those thousand citations, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't matter. Okay? So the H index, waste citations. So the h this shortcut of the H index will not be a problem if you're in a field. People have found out, if you're in a field like, physics where people write a lot of papers, but also have the papers are highly cited,
00:06:50 - where people don't write a lot of papers and, and papers are not cited too much. That is if you're in a field where the number of papers and the number of citations move together. If, if they're, if they're correlated positively, then the H index may not be a handicap. But in, I feel like economics where people don't write a lot of papers, but they write highly cited papers, then the H index becomes a problem. So, what, what,
00:07:20 - that I've discussed is the total citation index. That one takes your total number of citations, doesn't look at the number of papers you've written, it just says these are your total number of, of citations for all the papers you've written. So people say that that has a disadvantage because doesn't look at depth, it doesn't look at the number of times each paper is cited. It just looks at all the citations for the, for the papers. But like I discussed in that, in, in, in my paper, in reality, that's what what scholars do.
00:07:52 - but we also look at the quality of journals in which the citations appear. So when you combine the quality of the journal and the total citation index, it's gonna dominate the H index because the H index has this undesirable property where the number of papers you write is a cap on the, on, on, on your number of citations. So the h the, because the, the, the, the H index it with
00:08:23 - so many citations, but it don't count. So look at the number of papers you are writing are not, are not keeping up with the, which you are being cited. So overall, if you compare, if you take, if you combine the total citation index and the quality of journals, which is what we actually do in in academia, we just don't look at your number of citations. We also look at the quality of journals in which those citations appear, or the, or the quality of journals in which we've published. Then the total citations count will dominate the H index.
00:08:57 - what is called the impact factor. And the impact factor is the average number of citations to papers published in that journal over a certain period of time. Okay? And what has been found is that even journals with Im high empath factors are dominated by only a few papers. So there are papers that appear in high empath factor journals that don't get cited.

Impact Factors and Citation Practices in Journals

00:09:27 - and found that the median paper in the AM American Economy Review, which is one of the top journal top five journals in economics, has zero citation, don't get cited. So this is a case where the prestige of the journal is driven by only very few highly cited papers or various heterogeneity in the number of papers that get ci, but still is a question of averages.
00:10:02 - with a high impact factor, you are likely to be cited more than if you publish in a journal with a low impact factor. This is because journals with high EM impact factor factors or journals with high empath factors are high quality journals. So the referee process is more rigorous, they are more demanding. So the papers they end up publishing are high, tend to be high quality papers. So again, I'm talking in terms of averages.
00:10:31 - that appears in a high impact factor journal is a high quality paper or article. But in on average, the, the papers that appear in those journals are, are good. And in most disciplines, like in physics, economics, mathematics and all that, we agree on what the top journals are like in mathematics. The s of mathematics is considered to be a very good journal in economics. We have five top journals that are,
00:11:02 - So, so the quality of, so the quality of the journals, ma matter a lot. So I, somebody sent me an article yesterday and there's now something called what their friend was citation cartels. So these are people who fraudulently cite each other. So the, the, the, the article was about somebody who had done a study where they saw that there's, there are some universities in China
00:11:35 - their scholars are getting cited a lot. And it's because they form what are called citation cartels, where they publish in low quality journals and cite each other. They cite their colleagues to, to, to, to artificially inflict the, the citations. There's Something also called, citation pad, where you send an article to a journal and the reviewers insist
00:12:03 - They put pressure into c certain papers, and those papers tend to be their own papers. So like, like you expect in anything that is competitive, people try to cheat and all and, and all that. Yeah. But the quality of the journal matters a lot. And, and we kind of agree on what, in most fields, we agree on what the good journals are. The field in which we use the index matters. So again, if you are in a field where, the, for example, if there are field where the number

Citation Analysis: Depth vs. Breadth

00:12:38 - so in a field where people write a lot of papers and the papers tend to be cited, so they are correlated, or in a field where people don't write many papers like mathematics, and the papers are not cited that much here. The, the, the, the, the number of citations, the number of papers go together. If in that field kind of field, then maybe, then, then the H index will not be, will will, the shortcomings of the H index will not be too apparent.
00:13:08 - but if in a field where the correlation between the number of papers you write and, and citations is weak, right? So that you end up in a, in a field where people don't write a lot of papers, but the papers are highly cited, then the H index will not be a good, index. But in general, no matter what, which field you are in, if you combine the total citation count with a quality
00:13:41 - and breadth of work. And so in general, I would say that, the, the, the main message is that the total citations count gets a bad rap for not being a good in depth, because it doesn't, it's focused on breadth but not depth. But the reality is that is scholars, we just don't look at the total citations. We combine it with the College of journals that a scholar publishes a and if you combine those two, then it's okay.
00:14:13 - to, to, to scholars.

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